A Revival Of "The Pal" (The Palomino)

[erik]

Texans always say "Remember The Alamo". Here in L.A., any good fan of C&W music (not this Godforsaken s**t called "bro country" that we've got now) says "Remember The Palomino". Here's why:

www.kcet.org/socal/departures/columns/lost-landmarks/the-palomino-club-north-hollywoods-grand-ole-opry-west.html

[charlotte]

Terrific article. Great remembrance of early Linda included.

[erik]

Quote by charlotte:

Terrific article. Great remembrance of early Linda included.

Especially in the context of when she made her Palomino debut, in December 1971. During the late 1960s and on into the early 1970s, the Palomino was a hang-out for truck drivers and California rednecks; and the appearance of anyone in there with hair longer than, say, a quarter of an inch was likely to cause trouble (ask Chris Hillman, who appeared there with Gram in their Flying Burrito Brothers salad days in 1969). Linda herself had heard about the place while she still lived in Arizona; and because she was very steeped in C&W as a young'un, she had wanted to visit "The Pal" once she came out to L.A., but she wasn't 21 yet (the legal drinking age in California). She did get to see some of her favorites at the place in 1969 and 1970, including the Burritos, but she was always aware of what a tough joint it was, and how being a woman and a hippie might have made it very uneasy for her to be there at all.

Here's the article on Tony's website relating to Linda making her debut at the Palomino:
www.ronstadt-linda.com/artlat71.htm

[sliderocker]

Mar 9, 2014 18:51:18 GMT -5 erik said:

Especially in the context of when she made her Palomino debut, in December 1971. During the late 1960s and on into the early 1970s, the Palomino was a hang-out for truck drivers and California rednecks; and the appearance of anyone in there with hair longer than, say, a quarter of an inch was likely to cause trouble (ask Chris Hillman, who appeared there with Gram in their Flying Burrito Brothers salad days in 1969). Linda herself had heard about the place while she still lived in Arizona; and because she was very steeped in C&W as a young'un, she had wanted to visit "The Pal" once she came out to L.A., but she wasn't 21 yet (the legal drinking age in California). She did get to see some of her favorites at the place in 1969 and 1970, including the Burritos, but she was always aware of what a tough joint it was, and how being a woman and a hippie might have made it very uneasy for her to be there at all.

Here's the article on Tony's website relating to Linda making her debut at the Palomino:
www.ronstadt-linda.com/artlat71.htm

Off topic, briefly:
California's drinking age for women was 21? I could swear that when I was visiting an aunt and uncle and the cousins in California in '66 and '69, the legal drinking age for the girls was 18 but for the guys, it was 21. There were several states which had that same law, 21 for the guys and 18 for the girls. The drinking age was lowered to 18 in a lot of states once the age for voting was lowered but it wasn't all that long before states began re-raising the legal age to drink back to 21 for both. I knew plenty of teens at the time who grumbled about that here but they didn't bother to go to the polls and vote for candidates who would've supported their right to drink. They didn't vote at all. It's that kind of apathy that's led to what we have now.

As to the Palamino, its reputation was known here in Oklahoma and probably everywhere because of artists like Linda and Emmylou and Gram and the Flying Burrito Brothers and others appearing there. I would love to have seen Linda in that tight red sweater and hot pants in those days. I'd be willing to bet she was hit upon by many, if not all of the rednecks who saw her there. And I'd also be willing to bet those same rednecks probably thought if they could get Linda in bed, she probably had no sexual inhibitions. And Linda probably didn't have any security back in those days, just what the club may have provided but with tales of celebrities and customers mingling, Linda probably had to deal with more drunken customers than most celebrities. If I had been her manager, I wouldn't have booked her there without adding some extra security.

[erik]

Re. California drinking age: Well, back then, you couldn't even go into a bar, let alone a place like the Palomino, that served booze unless you were twenty-one. Not that this mattered to Linda (she wasn't much of a drinker), she just knew about the place.

As for Linda's appearances at the Palomino--when she made that first one in December 1971, she was only really known among the California country-rock crowd, and not quite yet the national figure she would become in a few short years, so whatever "security" she had probably came from her backing band, which at the time, I believe, included ex-Shiloh members Michael and Richard Bowden (Shiloh being the name of the Texas band Don Henley was a member of prior to the Eagles). Linda did impress the tough-to-please clientele with her fierce versions of "Break My Mind" and "Crazy Arms"; and every time she performed at the Palomino, up until her huge breakthrough in 1975, she sold the place out.

[sliderocker]

Mar 10, 2014 8:46:55 GMT -5 erik said:

Re. California drinking age: Well, back then, you couldn't even go into a bar, let alone a place like the Palomino, that served booze unless you were twenty-one. Not that this mattered to Linda (she wasn't much of a drinker), she just knew about the place.

As for Linda's appearances at the Palomino--when she made that first one in December 1971, she was only really known among the California country-rock crowd, and not quite yet the national figure she would become in a few short years, so whatever "security" she had probably came from her backing band, which at the time, I believe, included ex-Shiloh members Michael and Richard Bowden (Shiloh being the name of the Texas band Don Henley was a member of prior to the Eagles). Linda did impress the tough-to-please clientele with her fierce versions of "Break My Mind" and "Crazy Arms"; and every time she performed at the Palomino, up until her huge breakthrough in 1975, she sold the place out.

Interesting that the legal drinking age in California was 21 for both sexes as some of the states that had the 21-male/18-female age restrictions were always on a tear about superliberal California. Go figure. I worked in a bar in Oklahoma for a short time and they allowed under-age teens in the bar if accompanied by a relative, which I thought was stupid, as usually the relative was a parent. Nothing like seeing mom and/or dad get drunk and unruly. If the kid had a driver's license, that made the kid the designated driver responsible for getting their parent(s) home. No kid should ever have to see their parent(s) like that - one wonders what kind of impression that made on the kids? And the police set up right outside of the bar waiting for the drunks to leave for an easy bust.

As for Linda, I sort of figured her band members performed double duty as her security and whatever security the club provided, but I guess it was different times as nothing bad ever happened, as far as we know. It didn't take too much trouble for a celebrity for the press to report that news. And a lot of the time, it was supertrivial stuff they would've ignored if it had been an ordinary person. With Linda, some might have thought it strange that she played the Palomino in 1971 because she'd already had a couple of hit records and was signed to a record contract and didn't need to play clubs that paid performers as cheap as possible. People have a misperception that a singer with a record contract or appearaing in a movie or tv show is somehow making a lot of money. But, the reality is only a handful of celebrities are making the big bucks and everyone else makes what they make. I'd almost be willing to bet Linda was a lot more approachable back in the early days, more so than what she would've been after her records sold enough to make her a multimillionaire and the need for security was greater.

[erik]

Quote by sliderocker re. Linda at The Palomino:

With Linda, some might have thought it strange that she played the Palomino in 1971 because she'd already had a couple of hit records and was signed to a record contract and didn't need to play clubs that paid performers as cheap as possible. People have a misperception that a singer with a record contract or appearaing in a movie or tv show is somehow making a lot of money. But, the reality is only a handful of celebrities are making the big bucks and everyone else makes what they make. I'd almost be willing to bet Linda was a lot more approachable back in the early days, more so than what she would've been after her records sold enough to make her a multimillionaire and the need for security was greater.

Linda's hits ("Different Drum"; "Long Long Time") were really outside the scope of the C&W audience of the time; and anyway, she really did want to perform there, even though she wondered even back then why anyone would even pay $3.00 to see her. She did have that natural feel for doing established country music standards with a California rock twist that were innovative without alienating that genre's audience, and it showed every time she performed at that North Hollywood landmark.

[sliderocker]

Mar 10, 2014 15:04:11 GMT -5 erik said:

Linda's hits ("Different Drum"; "Long Long Time") were really outside the scope of the C&W audience of the time; and anyway, she really did want to perform there, even though she wondered even back then why anyone would even pay $3.00 to see her. She did have that natural feel for doing established country music standards with a California rock twist that were innovative without alienating that genre's audience, and it showed every time she performed at that North Hollywood landmark.

Linda's hits may have been outside the scope of the C&W audience but I don't believe that audience would've been that much out of the loop insofar as having any idea who she was or what her hits were. If you had family members or friends with divergent tastes in music, it was really impossible to be in a musical cocoon where you only listened to what you liked and nothing else. Still, the impression I got about the Palomino from reading that article is that its clientele in those days was mostly truckers and rednecks, individuals who likely would've been much older than Linda's typical audience, and who probably preferred the music they listened to when they were younger. I could be wrong in that assessment and the audience could've had quite a few hippie types by that time but I still think the crowd would've had some familiarity with Linda and her music. And they paid $3.00 to see her? Geez, how nice it would be to have those days again!

[erik]

Quote by sliderocker:

If you had family members or friends with divergent tastes in music, it was really impossible to be in a musical cocoon where you only listened to what you liked and nothing else. Still, the impression I got about the Palomino from reading that article is that its clientele in those days was mostly truckers and rednecks, individuals who likely would've been much older than Linda's typical audience, and who probably preferred the music they listened to when they were younger. I could be wrong in that assessment and the audience could've had quite a few hippie types by that time but I still think the crowd would've had some familiarity with Linda and her music. And they paid $3.00 to see her? Geez, how nice it would be to have those days again!

Yes, it was a fairly blue-collar audience; but then again, the San Fernando Valley, where the Palomino was situated, was a fairly blue-collar place at that time, and longhaired freaky people who entered the place did so at their own risk--even someone as steeped in C&W as Linda (note that the Burritos were sometimes heckled by the rough clientele with shouts of "Get off the stage, you godd***ed queers!). Ironically, it was no less a figure than Merle Haggard who had recommended to the Palomino owners at the time that Linda be allowed to perform there, which was, of course, a very good thing--both for her and for the club in general.

[sliderocker]

Mar 12, 2014 14:59:40 GMT -5 erik said:

Yes, it was a fairly blue-collar audience; but then again, the San Fernando Valley, where the Palomino was situated, was a fairly blue-collar place at that time, and longhaired freaky people who entered the place did so at their own risk--even someone as steeped in C&W as Linda (note that the Burritos were sometimes heckled by the rough clientele with shouts of "Get off the stage, you godd***ed queers!). Ironically, it was no less a figure than Merle Haggard who had recommended to the Palomino owners at the time that Linda be allowed to perform there, which was, of course, a very good thing--both for her and for the club in general.

I always thought the southern California was a more liberal place than that, much more than the ultra-conservative environment of Oklahoma and the southern states, where if you were a guy with a long hair or a girl who was a hippie type, you could count on being stared at, whispered about and followed by the police or worse, just because you were different. From the sound of things, the Palomino club wasn't a place where younger people hung out and probably wasn't an ideal place for acts like Linda or the Flying Burrito Brothers to perform. But, if all they had to endure was being heckled about their looks, they were lucky. There were individuals here and throughout the south who were the type to do much more than just heckle a person about their looks. Long haired hippie types here risked getting beat up and being ganged upon by individuals determined to enforce the "norm." Ironically, the type of people who did that claimed to be law and order types yet they were breaking the law by committing an act of violence. The authorities were always hesitant to press charges against such outstanding citizens. They showed no such hesitancy when the person committing the crime was a long haired hippie. But, it was kind of interesting that as long haired hippie types gained acceptance, when the pendulum swung the other way and you had skinhead types, you had the same villainization of those individuals. They were different. And I guess the fear has always been that someone different would do away with society, even though society has never gone away but has always adapted and gotten use to the changes.

[erik]

Quote by sliderocker:

I always thought the southern California was a more liberal place than that, much more than the ultra-conservative environment of Oklahoma and the southern states, where if you were a guy with a long hair or a girl who was a hippie type, you could count on being stared at, whispered about and followed by the police or worse, just because you were different. From the sound of things, the Palomino club wasn't a place where younger people hung out and probably wasn't an ideal place for acts like Linda or the Flying Burrito Brothers to perform. But, if all they had to endure was being heckled about their looks, they were lucky.

It's one of those myths about southern California, that we've always been politically liberal. But in the 1960s, the San Fernando Valley had not yet become one big urban sprawl; it was still largely dominated by 1950s suburbia and an aerospace industry whose members that always learned politically to the Right. It was even more so in Orange County, to the southeast of L.A., and still is (after all, we're talking about the very place where Reagan and Nixon always got their most fervent support when either man ran for high office, and where John Wayne lived out the last decade and a half of his life). And once you got beyond even the San Fernando Valley, up into the Santa Clarita Valley and Palmdale, in the Antelope Valley and Mojave Desert, you could find plenty of country music nightclubs populated by real-life cowboys, farmers, and ranchers. But the Palomino was the place to go for the bigger names.

So far as I know with respect to Linda's appearances at the Palomino, she was never heckled for having long hair, or for even wearing what might be considered "revealing" clothes. She was, by her own admission, more loose on that club's stage than most other female country artists of the time, and was keenly aware of her being something of a hippie in what was essentially a blue-collar joint. But she was much more easily accepted by that crowd because she played to her strength when it came to doing country material: a respect for tradition, while making those songs relevant once again in a California-based musical context.

[sliderocker]

It's one of those myths about southern California, that we've always been politically liberal. But in the 1960s, the San Fernando Valley had not yet become one big urban sprawl; it was still largely dominated by 1950s suburbia and an aerospace industry whose members that always learned politically to the Right. It was even more so in Orange County, to the southeast of L.A., and still is (after all, we're talking about the very place where Reagan and Nixon always got their most fervent support when either man ran for high office, and where John Wayne lived out the last decade and a half of his life). And once you got beyond even the San Fernando Valley, up into the Santa Clarita Valley and Palmdale, in the Antelope Valley and Mojave Desert, you could find plenty of country music nightclubs populated by real-life cowboys, farmers, and ranchers. But the Palomino was the place to go for the bigger names.

It's sort of like the myths about the south, that everone is a redneck conservative. Many are that way but there are many liberals to be found in the south. Even in Oklahoma, which for some stupid reason, aligns itself as part of the south but is actually part of the southwest. There's a big hate for Texas (again, something totally stupid) and one would think Oklahomans would want to be whatever Texans are not. But, the people in the two states are more alike than unlike. I have a joke I use to infuriate the more conservative Texas-hating crowd here and that joke is that Oklahoma is made up of Texans who couldn't get their way in Texas, so they came north and formed their own state! I can't really figure why either state aligns itself with the south as they actually have little to nothing in common with true southern people. And many southerners are the type that would look at someone from Oklahoma and Texas with the same view that some in OK and TX look at people in California and New York, that they somehow are different and not part of us even though we all belong to the same country. We have plenty of night clubs here as well, offering all kinds of music from rock and country to jazz to piano lounge. And not to mention comedy clubs. Nowadays, if you want to see the bigger names, you have to go to the tribal casinos; before then, I don't think Oklahoma had a big nightclub where celebrities performed. Most of the clubs were too damned cheap to pay a big name to perform in them.


So far as I know with respect to Linda's appearances at the Palomino, she was never heckled for having long hair, or for even wearing what might be considered "revealing" clothes. She was, by her own admission, more loose on that club's stage than most other female country artists of the time, and was keenly aware of her being something of a hippie in what was essentially a blue-collar joint. But she was much more easily accepted by that crowd because she played to her strength when it came to doing country material: a respect for tradition, while making those songs relevant once again in a California-based musical context.

Linda was lucky in one sense of the word because I suspect part of the reason she may have never been heckled was that even for being a hippie type, she was still extremely beautiful, and no guy of any age or any political point of view would've harassed her. And the fact her country music of choice was older country rather than newer probably won over many, even if it wasn't what was at the time currently hot in country music. Linda may have been a hippie back in the day but she didn't come off as threatening the way other hippies did and in a way, she probably caused many to rethink what they believed about hippies. Just as it only took one bad example to make a group of people look bad, one good example could undo whatever damage had been done - course, it probably took several thousand good hippies to get the John Wayne-Joe Friday types to see one bad hippie didn't make all hippies bad.

[erik]

Although it was shuttered in 1995, The Palomino, probably the best known of any country music nightclub in America outside of Nashville, is going to re-open for one night in October:

www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-palomino-club-reopen-benefit-20180815-story.html

The club, once located at the corner of Lankershim Boulevard and Vanowen Street in North Hollywood, was known during the late 1960s and early 1970s for being a fairly rough blue-collar institution (just ask Chris Hillman, who, when he, Gram Parsons, and the Flying Burrito Brothers performed there in 1969, frequently got heckled with epitaphs like "Get off the stage, godd***ed queers!"), but Linda's 1971 debut there broke the rednecks-versus-hippies stereotypes.

[the Scribe]

Was the building being used for something else? The online article is stopped from me reading it by the LA Times. All of these online sites these days want readers to get subscriptions now before reading. Linda mentioned the venue many times at concerts and in interviews.

Found this:


Baby Boomers Tribute "Behind the Music" The Palomino Club 1949-95 North Hollywood SFV

A Blast from the Past
Published on Mar 23, 2015
Baby Boomers Tribute "Behind the Music" The Palomino Club 1949-95 North Hollywood

The Palomino's Facebook Group page
www.facebook.com/groups/34623...

The Palomino Club was a music venue in the North Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles. It opened in 1949 and was the best-known country music club in Los Angeles for decades, closing in 1995.It was called "Country Music's most important West Coast club" by the Los Angeles Times and named national Club of the Year by "Performance" touring talent trade magazine. It featured such performers as Johnny Cash, Linda Ronstadt, Buck Owens, Patsy Cline, Delaney Bramlett, The Flying Burrito Brothers, Johnny Carver, Jerry Jeff Walker, Hoyt Axton, Tanya Tucker, and Willie Nelson, and was also a popular hangout for other country entertainers such as Merle Haggard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Lewis played there at least once a year from 1957 to 1987. Elvis Presley at least once strolled in unheralded and took in a set.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, the Palomino began to feature more rock acts, including many artists associated with SST Records.

interview Cameraman George Angelo

[erik]

I believe the article said that what used to house the Palomino is now a banquet hall of some kind.

Personally, I don't think The Pal ever lost its relevance to country music fans either here in Los Angeles or on the West Coast in general; it had such a big history. And certainly Linda loved patronizing the place, even though going in there as a hippie during the period of 1967 to 1971 tended to cause issues.

But what killed The Pal is that country music, in the 1990s, started going from being a musical style to a lifestyle, morphing into a billion-dollar industry, then to where it is now, which is almost strictly a cold-blooded business. Nowadays, if you are an up-and-comer, nobody cares that you started out in a country music nightclub; it's all about filling stadiums and arenas, and dumbing down the music.

But at least in its heyday, and despite that period when being a hippie and appearing in such a place could create a scene straight out of Easy Rider, someone like Linda could win over an otherwise staid clientele by respectfully doing C&W with a rock and roll edge and succeeding brilliantly (IMHO).

[erik]

A lot of great folks revived the spirit of The Palomino last night in the locale where it once stood. Linda was indirectly a part of this via a performance of one of her songs by one of the participants:

www.dailynews.com/2018/10/09/palomino-rides-again-show-packs-the-house-to-benefit-valley-relics-museum-local-music-lovers/

www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-et-ms-palomino-club-benefit-revival-20181009-story.html

[the Scribe]

I recently posted a video of the Palomino but not sure which thread.

Are there any places that fit that kind of bill these days? Or has music left L.A.?

[erik]

There are still some C&W nightclubs in the Los Angeles area, but they are few and far between. The genre's explosion of popularity in the 1990s to a level where most artists felt like they had to perform in arenas or stadiums to get attention pretty much killed off much of the C&W club scene here.

The Palomino was the premiere nightclub for the genre for decades, the epicenter so to speak. And during the late 1960s, there were tons of other smaller but sizeable "joints" like it in the region, such as The Aces (in the City of Industry), the Corncrib (in Monrovia), and also out in the San Fernando Valley (some close to where the Palomino itself was, in North Hollywood), Long Beach, Orange County, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Palmdale.

Linda, given her having grown up listening to country music as a young'un in Arizona, knew of the Palomino's existence before she moved out here to Los Angeles at the end of 1964, and likely wanted to see the place for herself right away. However, because the club did serve, how shall we say, "spirits", they didn't allow anyone through the swinging doors of the place under the age of 21, the legal drinking age in California in those days. Linda didn't hit the age of 21 until July 15, 1967.

And anyway, in that era, if you had long hair and tried to enter an establishment like that, you were immediately harassed by the club's very blue-collar clientele for being a "Commie". Linda was taking an even greater risk going in there, which I think she did as a patron beginning in 1969, because she happened to be a woman, and took the chance of being assaulted and maybe even raped. How she pulled off the trick of going in there without that bad stuff happening to her is anyone's guess, though I think she did it by wearing blue jeans and a tank top, because it made her look sort of muscular. And the reputation she was gaining in the local music press for doing C&W standards with a rock and roll twist but remaining respectful of tradition did make the operators of the Palomino seek her out, which finally happened at the end of 1971, resulting in extreme success for the club itself and, in the long run, for Linda as well.

Below is an Instagram post made by Alice Wallace about what she was told about Linda's performance of "Long Long Time" at the Palomino back in the day:

http://instagr.am/p/BouEtrahnR7

[the Scribe]

Baby Boomers Tribute "Behind the Music" The Palomino Club 1949-95 North Hollywood SFV

[MokyWI]

When I lived in LA from 92-96 I used to drive out to the Palomino about once a month. Mark Islam and I went a couple time together.

[the Scribe]

Oct 11, 2018 8:52:40 GMT -5 MokyWI said:

When I lived in LA from 92-96 I used to drive out to the Palomino about once a month. Mark Islam and I went a couple time together.

Was it a dangerous place? Or did that come later? Who did you go to see?

[MokyWI]

I can't remember who I went to see. Mark Islam who posts on this site once in a while took me the first time. I remember taking my sister and aunt when they came out for a visit. I probably went a total of 4-6 times.

[erik]

Quote by ronstadtfanaz:

Was it a dangerous place? Or did that come later? Who did you go to see?

As I've said, the only time being at the Palomino might have been dangerous was in the late 1960s, especially if your hair was, how shall we say, longer than a quarter of an inch.

[the Scribe]

Nov 21, 2018 19:10:06 GMT -5 erik said:

Quote by ronstadtfanaz:

Was it a dangerous place? Or did that come later? Who did you go to see?

As I've said, the only time being at the Palomino might have been dangerous was in the late 1960s, especially if your hair was, how shall we say, longer than a quarter of an inch.

The funny thing is all the rednecks in the 60's had short hair and by the end of the 70's they all had long hair and it pretty much stayed that way.

[the Scribe]

Oct 11, 2018 8:52:40 GMT -5 MokyWI said:

When I lived in LA from 92-96 I used to drive out to the Palomino about once a month. Mark Islam and I went a couple time together.

Speaking of whom today is his birthday. Just past the half-century mark. (ah, to be young again) If you are still in contact send him our best. Hope he has a good one.

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i.pinimg.com/originals/fa/c1/75/fac175da90e0685c7d310c410fbdb634.jpg

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With Donovan and a Marty Robbins poster.

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